ICPSR Storage Locations, 2010 edition

I originally posted a diagram of where ICPSR keeps copies of its content back in November 2009. You can find the post here.

The main change since that post is that we've started using a new storage service from the University of Michigan central IT organization, ITS. This is nice because it gives us another off-site storage location, although the geographic diversity from ICPSR is not that good.

It's also likely that we'll be participating in a pilot project to evaluate a cloud-based storage service, and we're also active in a project to build a LOCKSS-based storage network. Both of these projects hold great promise for creating several additional copies of our holdings in secure, durable storage.

IASSIST 2010

I just made my travel arrangements for IASSIST 2010.

This year's conference is hosted by the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER). IASSIST is an annual conference that meets in the US one year, and then somewhere outside of the US the following year, and so there is often a relatively strong global view among the attendees. This is the third IASSIST conference I've had the opportunity to attend.

For those not familiar with the IASSIST conferences it brings together people from the world of data archives, information technology, and library systems. I often see familiar faces from the Coalition for Networked Information member meetings at IASSIST.

I'm giving a paper on Thursday (June 3rd) afternoon about our NIH Challenge grant cloud computing project where we're evaluating the suitable of the "cloud" as an access mechanism for restricted-use research data. My talk is called Exploring New Methods for Protecting and Distributing Confidential Research Data and is part of a larger session called Secure Remote Access to Restricted Data.

I hope to see you there!

Components of our cloud-based system

We've put a lot of work into our NIH Challenge Grant where we're exploring the cloud as a means to enable researcher's to access restricted-use research datasets. A longer post is in our "cloud blog" but I thought I'd put in a plug for it here too.

If you click the image above, it will take you to the blog post.